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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiJeremy Cooper|title=A Tale for the Time BeingDiscord|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds Discord: a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the shore novel, as with most instances of Whaletowndiscord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the small Canadian island that she novel, Rebekah Rosen and her husband Oliver call homeEvie Bennet, are as different as they come. As Ruth opens it Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and begins reading the diary safely protected insideno-nonsense composer close to retirement, she learns about Naowhile Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a teenager in Japanprecocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. Through her writing Nao becomes real and the tales of her varied lifeThe two, predictably, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth don't always see eye to search for hereye, or their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at least to discover her fateodds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksPolly Barton|title=What Am I, A Possible LifeDeer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career as a public school master for Polly Barton's debut novel is an existence intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as an English officer behind German lines during WWIIboth subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy is a child sent newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the workhouse process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to give his family a chance of survivalnew audience. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brotherBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, Jeanne the French nursemaid lives in the shadow striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears disappearing altogether. From this, the indelible heart print of novel opens out into a girl who travels with a guitar. Five liveswider, five storiesresonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, one humanaccepted, emotional thread.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Five Star BillionaireThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is a booming economy unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for people in a position literary festival she is to take advantage; people like Gary the pop star who once won be a talent showguest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who feels has unexpectedly left the weight show. The train functions as a motif of his family's expectations. Then there's Phoebetransience and impermanence, moving to Shanghai from while the circus embodies the country on a promise reshaping of identity and a belief retreat into fantasy, an impulse that to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but it won't leave any lies at the very heart of them the same as when they startednovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jhumpa Lahiri295967572X|title=The LowlandPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence statusOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Subhash goes along with UdayanWhere they's ideas but it's Udayan who's re going and what the radicalpurpose of this journey is, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left Indiais uncertain. Eventually they go their separate ways, one studying abroad to avoid conflict and Django found the other becoming more deeply embroiled. Life cantickets ''t go on like this forever the floor somewhere'' and it doesn't has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the reverberations seem pair travel to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isn't always an external thingstation by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colum McCannMakenna Goodman|title=TransAtlanticHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In 1845 exIt could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise -slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for a lecture tour about freedom and emancipation only hard-to discover he's -place feeling that something in your life is not preaching to the converted after allquite right. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb into The protagonist, a rickety aircraft to fly disgraced professor on the Atlantic brink of losing both his career and land in Limerickhis relationship, embodies this feeling. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a world thatforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's about considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to see a miracle of negotiationhis potential fresh start. Meanwhile through it all Lily The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her descendants are also thereas ''an entity that is pure consciousness, not only watching history but beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living it on both sides of facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the Atlanticsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Eleanor CattonHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'What'The Luminaries'' is set in s the New Zealand gold rush good of the late 1860s. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book world that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you keeps changing like big, chunky books that you ? How can get lost one go on calmly living in for hours, then this is one for you.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted 'How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in true ultra-orthodox Jewish styleour bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, itThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's now 19-year-old Chanistory is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's turnimagination. SheAnnie's only met Baruchfate is, her fiancéabove all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, four times both in a quest for truth and he hasn't even seen her elbows but the match is made knowledge, and the day eventually arrives. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature in service of myth, fable and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holdsfantasy. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=UnexplodedVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day'All was strange''... In case This haunting phrase encapsulates the worst happenspervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for her Jatgeir and their young son Philip in the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and his favourite photo Eline, two of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that there's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not protagonists caught in the way that either of them could envisageits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah KentClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Burial RitesBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=FridrikEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, Agnes is steeped in anguish and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their homedistortion. Now Agnes awaits executionEven a kiss, imprisoned in the farm usually a symbol of a lowly local family who, rumour has itintimacy and closeness, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerousevidence of love lost. Margrit Jonsdottir (When the farmernarrator cries out internally, 's wife) doesn't feel threatened come over here and sets the shockedkiss me, malnourished Agnes '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to workconfirm her emotional numbness. Gradually Agnes reveals the events The imagined recipient of that night to Margrit and Totithis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a young priest. Her version seems ghost she conjures to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablytest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=HarvestHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|authortitle=Jim CraceLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes First published in1953 in French, this novel is a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through timeless text which wrenches the eyes hearts of Walter Thirsk its readers just as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure of Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their fields are blamed for proper position on the trangressions of otherspage and positions them elsewhere, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common landdisjointed, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in truncated. Like the name lives of ''profither characters, progress and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg WolitzerJonathan Buckley|title=The InterestingsOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not around to stop youprotagonist, Teresa. They smoked potSet against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, drank vodka this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Tangs - and talked way into its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the night about anything and everythingdeath of both her parents. Plays were put onPrompted by her mourning, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self- for some it would be a lifetime. Back in 1974aware, as Nixon left inviting the White House under reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one book that not only requires but inspires depth of their number called themthought, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods since its narrative structure is fragmentary and then they faced the real worldironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlotte MendelsonEowyn Ivey|title=Almost EnglishBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a border at Combe schoollife beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, destined - as she a setting which enables her bad habits and all about her know - for Cambridge and the medical professionaccidental neglect of Emaleen. After her first term sheDescribed as a 's wonders if she's made a mistake as itwild card's definitely not like it was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets to sleep on the sofa she feels stuck in her inday-laws' flat because their son to- her husband - upped day life, and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in even if yearns to cross the family you're living with is Hungarian Wolverine river and hasn't entirely left live on the ways North Fork to fulfil her desires of the old country behinda simple life surrounded by nature. At Combe When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there's too much about Marina that , she could be mocked for feels called to go - or could get and bring Emaleen with her a cruel nickname. Marina simply doesnWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen't fit in, but the family have sacrificed everything so that she can go theres lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreview|title=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyFrontpage|author=Haruki Murakami|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The ''1Q84'' trilogy is, without doubt, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense on their own. The first book in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It does, though, demand a degree of dedication, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be the best entry point into the wonderful world of Haruki Murakami. As often with Murakami though, it's possible to read this book at a number of levels. On the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown in. At a deeper level, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, life and death and what you might call yin and yang. It's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big part. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude 'delicate', but that's just how the story appears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSally Rooney|title=A Kind of Eden |author=Amanda SmythIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Martin Rawlinson Sally Rooney has escaped from studied the cold dreary English weather to the exotic heat chessboard of life and exotic women is something of Trinidada grandmaster at putting it into words. He might have a wife Her dialogue is gripping and a daughter back homeso brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, but home is a long way away and here the central one for readers to unravel is the young fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and beautiful SafiyaPeter Koubek. She's Ivan, a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guysocially awkward chess prodigy, but somehow she didn't. Somehow they talkedcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, and walked, and she showed him the real Trinidad and he fell a successful lawyer living in love Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with hercancer, and with her homethe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=A Marker to Measure DriftWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=Jacqueline roams As always in Dostoyevsky, the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvationcharacter work is sublime. It helps but hunger One is always with her, lurking alongside the memory of never left wondering what a former life in Liberia character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and the mind's ear voice of her mothertemperaments with remarkable clarity. Jacqueline is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FamiliarJames Baldwin|authortitle=J Robert LennonGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Is there a greater change in ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought notnarrator David, having been forced to bury fifteen year old Silasan American man living in Paris, and try and move on as he navigates his torturous affair with her husband Derek and the year-older sonGiovanni, Sam. But an Italian bartender he meets in a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual, solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universegay bar. She pops from one car While David is engaged to anotherHella, from under a cloudless sky to a slightly greyer one – and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she who is plumper, travelling in a different jobSpain, stiil married to Derek the real tension in the same home – novel arises not from his infidelity but still from the mother deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of two young men…his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sorrow of AngelsAlba de Cespedes |authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonForbidden Notebook|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first bookmoment our protagonist, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him thereValeria Cossati, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''the boy'' might have latched on to stability for oncepurchases her forbidden notebook, and replaced learns about herself in the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, most intimate and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surroundsrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Heaven and HellOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=IcelandAt best, this novel is a hundred years ago. From a place that scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the very definition cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of rural and remotean unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way outslim, attractive and five on the way back. The deceased newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the best friend – or perhaps only friend – of the main characterworld, who is still young enough to merely be known as ''boy''. When he returns but resolves not to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life is an answer, and for whatlose sleep over it: in fact, after the tragedy he has witnessedher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The SonMatthew Tree|authortitle=Philipp MeyerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novelTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, ''The Son,'' is an epic, multi-generational saga a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of Texas lifeself confidence. Tracing the McCullough family from the middle of the nineteenth century So Tim applied himself to the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]]his studies, Richard Ford cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic worldset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanMosby Woods|title=The Spinning HeartA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The West isn'My father still lives back t the road past the weir dominant force it once was. Nobody in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day West is quite sure how to see mend this or even if mending it is he dead and every day he lets me downthe best course of action. Governments are flailing. He hasn't yet missed A war here, a day of letting me downpush for climate action there.' This A feeling that nobody is how we meet Bobby - Bobby Mahon, as we'll learn - and he's brutally honest about his feelings for his father, who has deliberately drunk away the farm he inherited from ''his'' fatherin actual charge. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's onlyImagine then, or even main, problemthere was a man with precognition. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burke's foreman but Imagine the financial crash has hit and Pokey has done strategic advantage in this asset; a runnerman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. An investment That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in a fake island off Dubai finished him and now he's disappearedhistory. On the estate of forty houses he was buildingImagine then, just two are occupied and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyridersthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620067</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natasha Solomons0571379559|title=The Gallery House of Vanished HusbandsBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy a fridge for ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the princely sum story of twenty-one guineasfour people. SheTess Hembry'd saved hard for it - and her parents had given her s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveriverbank, built of broken bricks. Instead Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of buying a fridge she commissioned a portrait of herself time, storms and so began her involvement in floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the postdelivery rounds -war art sceneand to bring in sufficient money. Juliet wasn't They have twin boys - by any stretch of Sonny and Max, the imagination - an artist, but she had a startling ability to spot a rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'good'' pictures Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It was simply something which she ''knewPeople don't believe that they're related, much as less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on the day he didn't return home as expecteds his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title=IndiscretionDesert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Charles DubowEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=35|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles Dubow's debut novel promises 'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a modern day Great Gatsby. It too is set amongst the rich light and famous outside New Yorkweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, it too is narrated by a character seemingly on young woman unravels the outsideyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, Maddythe narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's childhood friend Walterdeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
|title=Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''
Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Russian StoriesAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Francesc SeresBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the product southern coast of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translationher home country. Francisco Guillen Serés This is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred place she spent her formative years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then It is not a place she was born into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty but the one she thinks of them written by five writers read fluently and engaginglyas home. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with How she came to be at the olderVilla, earlier writers like Bergchenkohow it became her home, who died in and the siege of Stalingrad, at machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the end''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Ranging over mythic Padma's present fails to escape her past and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals much like the musical score of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburga film, ferocious bears in the deep heart of that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recountedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The ParrotsSea Defences|author=Filippo BolognaHilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with the topic of parrotswe first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to repeat simple phrasespick the children up. Her husband, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their own. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birdsChristopher, but about writers collects six- in fact, three writers. Just as the Neoyear-Pagans have a liking of the Triple Goddesses of The Maiden, The Mother old Hannah and The Croneher elder brother, our three writers are similarly split into The BeginnerJamie, The Writer, and The Masterwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. All three of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize Holthorpe, a prestigious award that would revitalise on the career of The MasterNorfolk coast, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer is a lovely place in the annals of history. The setting of Rome , but Rachel is utilised struggling to provide both develop a stunning backdrop real bond with the parish - and one that is sympathetic to the mood of our characters. The stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bolognashe's prose is delicate and descriptivein awe of the vicar, Gail, but not at then she's been doing the sacrifice of pacingjob for more than thirty years. The stage is set; Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem..beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. out of the three writers, none of them deserves to win The Prize And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=In The Dutch MountainsBoy and the Dog|author=Cees NooteboomSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=OftenFirst of all, when asked if what I’m reading is a good book I hesitate before answeringit was the earthquake, trying to decide what deep in the asker really means. Do they mean is it exciting? Funny? Full of interesting characters? Recentlyocean floor, someone asked me that which created the tsunami and when I hesitated they gave me this as a clarifier: “Are you better off for having read it?”. In this instance, yesin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. I think I am The result was complete and utter devastation. However The deaths were uncountable, despite coming away and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from this book with their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a strong positive feeling about it, it’s also left me convenience store. He wasn't a little befuddleddog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782067191</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Every PromisePapa on the Moon|author=Andrea BajaniMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'Every Promise' ' is narrated by Pietro. His partner, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a baby, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother for advice. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives Walter stood waist-deep in their old family apartmentthe fragrant water, who reminds Pietro of naked except for his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's ill-fated Russian campaignbeaten leather hat. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes Long strands of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with the pasttadpoles inside them. It's a story about Two of the past, dogs leaned over the present opening and barked down at the future and strange noise of the struggle buckets as he filled them.'' How is that for one man to make sense an opening? The style of this. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching novel in exposing the vulnerability form of his narratorinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. HoweverAnd author Marco North, it is very much a slow burn who has the most wonderful turn of a book and it's not always an easy book phrase, starts as he means to readgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>
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